The next leader of the Chinese territory of Macau has a Sacramento State connection – he received a bachelor’s degree in Health and Safety Studies from the University in 1977.

Fernando Chui, 52, handily won a Macau election committee’s vote to make him the territory’s chief executive, effective in December, according to international press reports.

Born in Macau, the former secretary of Social and Cultural Affairs came to the United States for his education, which also included a master’s degree in health administration and a doctorate in public health from the University of Oklahoma, the reports said.

The leadership change is the first for Macau, which has a population of about a half-million people, since the former Portuguese colony returned to Chinese rule in 1999. Its next-door neighbor, former British colony Hong Kong, returned to Chinese control two years earlier.

Chui is from a prominent Macau family heavily involved in commercial business interests involving property, tourism and finance, reports said, and his selection by the 300-member, pro-Beijing election panel was relatively assured. He will replace incumbent leader Edmund Ho.